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love cannot be learned, but obstacles can be removed

Learn the art of love, but what it really means is: learn the art of removing all that hinders love. It is a negative process. It is like digging a well: you go on removing many layers of earth, stones, rocks, and then suddenly there is water. The water was always there; it was an undercurrent. Now you have removed all the barriers, the water is available. So is love: love is the undercurrent of your being. It is already flowing, but there are many rocks, many layers of earth to be removed.

Learn the art of love. It is really not learning love but UNlearning the ways of unlove. The moment you are centered in your being, rooted in your being, you become full of grace, as if Tao has penetrated you. You are empty and Tao starts descending in you. It can descend only when you are not: your absence becomes its presence.

Tao is a presence. And two swords cannot exist in one sheath: either you can exist, or Tao. You have to disappear, evaporate. Your absence is what tao is all about.

The process of tao is the process of becoming absent more and more, so that one day there is only empty space left inside and nothing else. In that emptiness, whenever it is total, instantly Tao is felt. Tao is felt as a presence -- and Tao is another name for love. And to know Tao is to know poetry, to know Tao is to know celebration, to know Tao is to know bliss -- SAT-CHIT-ANAND.

That's how the mystics in the East have defined Tao: SAT means truth, CHIT means consciousness, ANAND means bliss. If you are utterly empty, you will come to know these three things. For the first time you will have some taste of truth, some experience of consciousness, some flavor of bliss. Only when you are destroyed the context is created in which Tao can be felt. Your death is the beginning of a divine existence.

Die! Die to the ego, die to your past, and you will be resurrected. That resurrection will make you go beyond death, beyond time, beyond misery, beyond the world -- what Buddha calls "beyond this shore." Prophet Muhammad, peace be upon him, also said: "Die before your death". And this death points to the death of the false-ego in us.